In 2015, I met my friend Alex whilst interning for Channel 10. As young and keen media students, we flew to Melbourne for the weekend of the Logie Awards to help with the filming of the ‘Studio 10’ morning show.

Of course there is no way to get into the vibe of Melbourne without dressing like a pretentious hipster so the night before our flight we agreed to pack leopard print coats, man scarves and thigh high socks.

After landing, we headed to the famously graffitied alley ways of Melbourne in our hipster get ups. However we didn’t receive the reactions we were expecting! We thought the Melbourners would get the joke and see how over the top we were being. Instead, a random photographer approached us asking if he could photograph us. We’d never been in a photoshoot in our lives!

That afternoon the trail of compliments continued. We decided to up the anti and went back to our hotel to change into our next kale loving, vintage outfit of snobbery. However, as soon as we walked into an underground warehouse bar (known for housing the ultimate hipsters) we were bombarded with praise.

“Mahn, you’re wearing a red beret and you’re not French? That’s so alternative.”

I couldn’t tell if Melbournites genuinely liked our outfits or were just the nicest people on earth! In retrospect, it was probably the latter. We bumped into this one guy whilst waiting at a traffic light and after hearing that we were visiting from Sydney, he invited us out on a pub crawl with a bunch of his friends who were all insanely nice.

We went to an awesome club in a building that used to be a dentist’s office whilst sipping on craft ales all night and went on to eat organic acai bowls. We’d finally out-hipstered everyone!

…besides that one Melbourner I met who only drank coffees at cafes and didn’t know how to make instant coffee!?

-Jen.